"The bodhisattva Kuan Yin remains one of the most popular figures in Buddhism, loved and worshiped throughout Asia for over a millennium. She arrived in Hawai'i with the first Chinese plantation workers, each of whom would have kept a ricepaper print of her over a small altar in his room. Since then, her presence has grown in the Islands. In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean temples in downtown Honolulu and Palolo Valley, she towers over worshipers and their gifts of oranges. Her image, reproduced by the dozen, crowds Thai and Vietnamese shops." "In this book, Kathy Phillips and Joseph Singer celebrate Kuan Yin's many incarnations in words and images that exhibit humor, poignancy, and the open-endedness of a koan. An introduction examines Kuan Yin and her place in religion, legend, art, changing social prescriptions for gender, and the everyday lives of Hawai'i's people for more than a century."--BOOK JACKET.